Emir wrote:
I meant he could’ve done it in the hospital – assisted.
In hospital? In the UK? Did not know this.
Peter wrote:
From what I’ve read, the Swiss option is pretty unpleasant, because you basically die of suffocation.
They use Natrium-Pentoarbital orally, I understand 15g of it. It’s a strong sedativum which, in overdose, will put people into a comatose sleep and then stop both breathing and heartbeat. They say that the later part of the effect is not felt as the person is in a coma by the time breath and heart stops. It is also used in the US for lethal injection and it is used in veterinary medicine for euthanasia of animals (also intravenous). In Belgium, assisted suicide apparently also uses NaP but via injection, which is much faster.
I don’t approve of any of this, even though the “process” so to speak is clinical. Still, the impact on the next of kin and relatives is tremendous. But if someone is determined it is certainly preferrable to this kind of thing.
Clipperstorch wrote:
So, in the end some of the unexplained accidents which fill pages of discussion on the aviation forums might not be so accidental after all.
There was a study done here in the US that comes to a somewhat different conclusion, i.e. that suicides by airplane do occur, but are a tiny percentage of the overall airplane accident picture. That said, I’m sure that some hard / impossible to explain accidents were deliberate.
Suicide has become a significant thing amongst the pilot community, or at least that is what my AME said when I questioned why on the Class 2 medical paperwork, that we now have to print off and take with us for each medical, it asks the question “do you ever or have you ever felt suicidal?” Which always makes me wonder how many pilots would answer yes to that.🙂
Which always makes me wonder how many pilots would answer yes to that.
Presumably the same people who answer yes to “have you ever been associated with a terrorist organization” on immigration forms.
Really sad. I wonder every time one decides to terminate his life what might have come out, if that person would have chosen to just do something good in the remaining part of his life. If he had enough money to pay the plane he would have had enough money to go out and help make the world just a tiny bit better.
If I get some similar notice one time in my life, this is what I would do.
UdoR wrote:
If he had enough money to pay the plane he would have had enough money to go out and help make the world just a tiny bit better.If I get some similar notice one time in my life, this is what I would do.
Apparently he only had three months to live. Not much time to improve things (and we don’t know his testament, he may well have made provisions along these lines).
I don’t know how I would deal with this, but a school friend of mine had a terminal diagnosis, 9 months. He went on some last trips and generally, according to mutual friends (we now live many time zones apart and I hadn’t seen him in many years), enjoyed life. He died almost to the day after the 9 months had elapsed…
“From what I’ve read, the Swiss option is pretty unpleasant, because you basically die of suffocation.”
I read about someone designing a “self suicide pod” for countries where it is legal. Recirculating the air while removing CO2 would lead to death by anoxia, with no feeling of suffocation.
Adding 4% CO2 while leaving the normal O2 would not kill, but would produce a horrible suffocating effect.
I know of someone who committed suicide using nitrogen. It isn’t toxic but if you use it to displace nearly all the oxygen, you die of asphyxia without any unpleasantness at all. The feeling of breathlessness is due t the presence of CO2, not the absence of oxygen.
So why did the Americans abandon their gas chambers instead of just using nitrogen? I guess they are aiming for a middle ground between cruel and not unpleasant at all. Probably it’s not so simple after all.
Clipperstorch wrote:
So why did the Americans abandon their gas chambers instead of just using nitrogen?
Gas chambers are not suitable for this apparently but it would rather be done via a form of face mask covering mouth and nose. It has been discussed in the US in the face of the difficulties they face obtaining the drugs for lethal injection.
Maoraigh wrote:
I read about someone designing a “self suicide pod” for countries where it is legal.
I recall reading about a guy who built a working guilloutine in his bedroom.
